Engineering Manager

About KIRA

KIRA aims to make financial services smart, dependable, and accessible for everyone. Founded in 2019, KIRA developed Southeast Asia's first mobile-first insurance platform, connecting millions with insurance digitally. The company is expanding its offerings to include spending, saving, investing, currency exchange, travel services, and beyond. KIRA's vision is to empower people with tools to optimize their finances, fostering independence and expertise, driven by cutting-edge AI technology.

Role Overview

We seek an Engineering Manager to lead a high-performing engineering team responsible for building and scaling products that serve millions across Southeast Asia. This role requires a strong technical leader skilled in guiding engineers, making strategic architecture and engineering decisions, and driving products from concept to production. The Engineering Manager will oversee team quality and delivery speed while balancing technical excellence and business outcomes.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and oversee a diverse engineering team skilled in frontend, backend, and full-stack development.
• Drive engineering delivery for significant product domains, ensuring swift release without sacrificing quality or reliability.
• Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams including product, design, mobile, backend, and AI to translate ambiguous product challenges into clear technical plans.
• Steer technical architecture decisions covering APIs, databases, system integrations, infrastructure, and customer-facing applications.
• Establish stringent engineering standards for coding quality, system design, testing, observability, security, and operational stability.
• Remain hands-on by engaging in architecture and code reviews, debugging, and crucial engineering judgments.
• Mentor engineers using regular feedback, coaching, performance evaluations, and goal setting.
• Identify early performance issues and proactively elevate the team's engineering and execution capabilities.
• Enhance development workflows, tooling, and automation to accelerate team productivity and scalability.
• Manage production outcomes beyond deployment: monitor systems, resolve incidents, investigate root causes, and prevent recurrence.
• Cultivate a robust engineering culture emphasizing ownership, rapid iteration, technical excellence, and continuous improvement.

Candidate Profile

• Extensive software engineering experience building and deploying production systems.
• Proven leadership in managing engineering teams and driving delivery.
• Deep technical expertise across backend and frontend development, APIs, databases, distributed systems, or cloud infrastructure.
• Ability to balance architecture decisions with trade-offs between speed, scalability, and maintainability.
• Track record of guiding products or platforms from conception through launch and live operation.
• Comfortable reviewing technical designs, challenging system choices, and troubleshooting complex production issues.
• Strong capabilities in people leadership, including coaching, managing performance, and nurturing high-performing teams.
• Good product intuition, linking engineering work with customer value and business goals.
• Effective in ambiguous environments, skilled at prioritizing and steering teams to clear outcomes.
• Strong ownership mindset, taking responsibility to resolve issues and maintain progress.

Exclusions

• Managers preferring to avoid close technical involvement.
• Engineers seeking managerial titles without accountability for team outcomes.
• Leaders who require complete specifications before starting work.
• Managers focused on meetings or processes over delivering results.
• Individuals who avoid handling difficult technical or people challenges.
• Candidates unable to clearly articulate their personal leadership and technical contributions.

Expectations

We seek engineering leaders with notable technology achievements — not simply large teams or prestigious employers, but those with direct contributions to creating or scaling impactful products or engineering organizations. Demonstrated proficiency in both technical prowess and team leadership is essential.

Additional Details

This is a fully remote role, open globally. Successful candidates must excel working in an international, distributed environment with colleagues across multiple time zones and locations. English fluency is mandatory.

Recruitment Process

• Online technical assessment or practical exercise.
• Interview focused on technical expertise and leadership skills.
• Final interview with CEO.

Strong candidates may complete the process and receive offers within one week. Early completion of assessments is favored.